… In recent years, social psychologists have found that, rather than surrendering rationality and self-awareness, people in crowds define themselves according to who they are with at the time; their social identity determines how they behave. Stephen Reicher, a social psychologist at the University of St Andrews, says this model of crowd behaviour fits every case of public disorder in the past three decades where data have been collected. …
At the University of Sussex, researchers led by the social psychologist John Drury have coined the term ‘collective resilience’, an attitude of mutual helping and unity in the midst of danger, to describe how crowds under duress often behave. CONT.
Michael Bond, Aeon